Cycle-Breaking Parents

with or without (C)PTSD//and

Little ran off while we were at the park before swim lessons— fine. I can see the too-much-ness of a busy day wearing down his eyelids and Moonie looks at me from the corner of her eye. We both know where this is going. I corral him, barely, and we walk into the rec center for Moonie’s swim lesson. It’s five pm. I have brought an abundance of snacks and water for Little who is no doubt hungry and exhausted. I tell him that I need him to eat a food and drink a water before I’ll give him his tablet for the next thirty minutes. He protests. I hold. We go rounds— at one point he is lying on the rec center bathroom floor, his head touching the base of the toilet. I am grossed out. I hold. I ask him if he’ll come on— eat, drink and regulate with me. He stays stretched out on the bathroom floor. The toilet mimicking a sort of umbrella hovering over my son’s head. Gross. I hold.

A mother sits on the floor with another human— her niece maybe, next to the pool entrance. They have watched in silence as I have gone back-and-forth with my four year old at five pm in a rec center hallway that smells like piss and chlorine. We lean over our respective shoulders and our eyes meet just as she begins whispering something to the person next to her. As soon as we lock eyes she realizes how this might look. She picks her head up and redirects her words to my face instead. I don’t know how you’ve stayed so calm this entire time. You’re doing really great and I was just about to tell her that. I get it! We’re breaking cycles!

Tears stuff the back of my throat like a sock and I thank her.

We’re breaking cycles rings through my head for hours after.

---

Moonie was four the first time I had to tell a doctor to watch their mouth in front of my child. No, we won’t be discussing her weight. No, we’re not going to make assumptions. No, you certainly won’t voice your concerns while my child, my four year old baby, is in the room.

I hear my own mother in my ears— you have to protect her.

---

My mother oiled her entire body before lotioning her entire body after showers and baths. She was a chaser of the sun— both God given and man-made rays. She wore bikinis and crop tops. She rarely wore a bra and if she did it was more or less for decoration. She smoked Marlboro Mediums she kept in a leather case that had a pocket for her Zippo. She always smelled good. She was the first woman I knew that wore her curves like a gift. She taught me to hold my head up and to never look scared or lost while I walked alone. Walk like you’ve got somewhere to be and somebody is waiting on you.

I oil my body before lotioning my body every time I take a shower or bath. I look for the sun with enough UV protection to let the light in but hopefully keep the cancer at bay. I wear bikinis and crop tops. I wear bras for practical and adornment reasons. I quit smoking cigarettes years ago but partake in a cheeky fag while vacationing (hey Grecian tobacco products!) and I generally have a lighter on me for whatever or for you. I always smell good. After many years I have the ability to wear my body, my curves, my softness, like the gifts they are.

Moonie has started walking to neighborhood park with her best friends.

Hold your head up when you walk, I tell her. Walk like you’ve got somewhere to be and somebody is waiting on you because I am.

I love you.

---

Little is climbing me like a tree. It’s been thirty minutes since we walked into the rec center that is an approximately 987 degree greenhouse cum hallway and smells of piss and chlorine. My chamber containing various size and gendered bathrooms throughout. My four year old has laid on the bathroom floor, laid on the floor under the bench where I am sitting, laid on the bench with his feet splashing imaginary water on my legs as though he is partaking in his own swim lesson outside of actual water.

I know you’re having a hard time but I cannot and will not let you hurt me. I’m sorry it’s hard right now.

I rattle off his options for what seems like the two millionth time. You can have a snack and some water and then I can give you your tablet. You can keep doing whatever it is you’re doing but you may not kick or climb me. Would you like a hug and to breathe with me?

I know you’re having a hard time.

I begin to unravel. I’m touched out and overwhelmed and starting to sweat. I know what’s happening— I know the response my body is having. I’m not in control and I hate that. He’s getting big and I’m healing enough to know that my returned bigness, despite how false-comforting it may be in the moment, gets us no where. The sliding of his sticky skin against my own, the loud decibels in my ears in sauna-like, piss and chlorine quarters, are amplified. All of it begins to impact my own ability to breathe. He reaches across me to try to get his tablet and accidentally pulls my hair, my least favorite sensation. I grab his hands and hold him in his lap, very aware of the eyes on me from the other mothers, the kids waiting, and the sound of the impending tears beginning to thrum in my chest.

I know you’re having a hard time but I will not let you hurt me.

The sock in my throat turns to sand and snakes its way down. That’s where crocodile tears are born from, you know. Not your eyes but your heart space. I can feel the mother that has only watched the latter half of whatever this is trying to catch my attention and I cannot look at her because I know what will happen if I do. Every opportunity she gets I can sense her eyes boring into my forehead as I intentionally avert her gaze. I take in this closet of a hallway that is too hot and smells of piss and chlorine where my four year old has turned into a walking, overtired and over-hungry nightmare. I want to walk the plank straight into that pool.

And then it happens.

---

I let her go. And sometimes when the stars align and everyone is rested and fed and hydrated and regulated, I let him go with her. It’s exciting at first— the house is quiet! they’re only two blocks down! a gaggle of children doing kid shit and flexing their independence! cute! But after some time passes I start to get restless. I’m not worried, you see. I am contemplating whether or not they know or wonder if I am thinking of them. When me and my own gaggle of kid friend-family fucked off for the day, the whole day, we knew the deal. Don’t come back unless someone is hurt. Take a pack of hot dogs and the open pack of Kraft singles. As a child I remember thinking if the adults thought about us. If my mom missed me or worried about me.

I know I’m projecting and I do my best not to. I stand and get a little pacey. I don’t want to be that mom and crash their party.

I trust you.

We’re not far.

I love you.

I miss you.

It’s the only time I wish she had a phone.

They come home with their chests puffed and their faces sunkissed—ravenous and sweaty. The whole lot reeks of kid-stink and sticky. They are beaming.

I catch Moonie’s arms and spin her into me before she goes downstairs to tell her that I missed her but she beats me to it.

I missed you, Momma. Little did so good!

I missed you too, bud. I’m so glad you’re home.

It’s then I realize I am beaming too.

---

My mother rallied for me in ways I knew I found safety in but never quite understood. A teacher spanked me in second grade when the math was literally not mathing and I’ll never forget watching my mother light her up like a Christmas tree, something she always used to say and that I still do today. Or the time my father tried to keep me from her after I had gotten ahold of the cordless phone, snuck it downstairs to the bathroom to find her just two blocks over at my aunt’s house, and pleaded into the receiver for her to come get me, please. Something I would continue to do until I no longer could. I remember the way she pushed, literally pushed my father aside on the stairs, over my dead body will you keep my child from me and I knew she meant that. Or the time I was so tirelessly picked on during the bus ride after school that I started having anxiety attacks and intentionally missing my bus until she drove down to the bus depot to catch the bus driver on his way back to his truck and she lit him up like a Christmas tree, too.

---

I acquiesced.

The second I met her eyes she gave her own pep talk— I would have lost it a long time ago. It’s so hard! You really are doing wonderful. Nods in agreement from the other parents and I am done. A hysterical chuckle choked with tears tumbles out of my mouth that I know I won’t be able to stop. Moonie bounds through the pool doors— excited before her face meets mine and falls. She gets halfway through what’s wrong Momm— before noticing her brother. She strokes my hair and bows her head for the changing room.

My reactivity generally has two settings— big and very small. By the time we made it back to the car post-swim lessons (whatever the fuck that was) I am small and shaking and silent. I thank Moonie for offering to take our things to the car so I could chase Little across the field for the second time and wrestle him into the car. I make sure he’s buckled. I do not say a word.

Little notices the tears on my face and in his own lack of control, his four year old inability to regulate, to know, to fix, fills him with the emotion humans have the easiest time accessing- rage.

I hope— I hope you keep crying, Mom!

Moonie side-eyes him but doesn’t say anything. There is no music, just the sound of Little’s wailing that shifts into a chant. keep cry-ing! keep cry-ing! To which his sister has decided she’s had enough and hisses through a clenched jaw—You will not speak to our mother that way.

I use my knee to steer so I can reach around and hold her hand and shift literal gears. His chanting continues the entire drive home, the words losing cohesive meaning and becoming an emotional cocktail of words that have blended together. reep bye-ing! deep fry-ing!

---

After he was home and held and watered and fed and bathed in that order, all was right in the world again. I shuffled back to Moonie’s room, knocked on the door, and sat on the edge of her bed.

I need you to know how much I appreciate your help. How much I appreciate you having my back. How much I value your tender and compassionate heart. And I need you to know how none of this belongs to you to manage. My feelings, your brother’s feelings, anyone else’s feelings, that is not on you to fix. You are such a brilliant nurturer, I don’t want you to lose that, but I don’t want you to carry it like a cross. Set it down, baby. I’m here. It was hard. I am sad and that is not your responsibility to fix.

I’m sorry the evening was so chaotic— that was just as hard for you as it was for any of us. Now, tell me about what you learned today in swim lessons, okay?

---

I thank my kids and apologize to my kids like my life depends on it. I show them that I am in their corner in every sense of the saying. I hold and I fold and I get up and do it all over again. I fuck it up sometimes and these kids know they’re safe. They ask us to stop kissing instead of pleading with us to stop screaming. God, these kids are mine and yet they’re not at all. Something that simultaneously terrifies and fortifies me. The urge to protect them physically, sure. But emotionally— room to expand and easy to offer up explanations. Sometimes I still holler and I hate it but when I do I apologize. The sound of a baby crying, a specific kind of cry for too long, vacuums the air from my lungs until I have to mute the show, go the opposite direction, find my headphones immediately. When my kids tell me they hate me in a fit of rage I tell them that I love them and I always will. When it’s too much I find myself sitting in a dark bathroom on the floor next to the toilet. Gross. I hold.

I keep on to finish the break in honor of my mother who initiated the severance.

I break so we can all untether.

Biggest love,

AR

Currently Reading: I wish I remembered who recommended All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews because it was wonderful. I read it quickly and with excitement.

Currently Listening Too: the cat cry-meowing on the flight to LA. Legislative session ended herein Colorado yesterday and I’m very grateful to be GTFO.

Currently Cooking: Whatever the streets of LA and our beloved friends are feeding us. With absolute pleasure.